Arza Adams: The Man Who Carried the News of the Martyrdom to Nauvoo (1836–1889)

Arza Matson Adams (1804–1889) was baptized on Christmas Day 1836 by Elder John E. Page in Canada. A trusted member who 'knew the Prophet Joseph Smith,' Arza was the man Church leaders chose to carry the news of the Prophet's martyrdom sixteen miles to the city of Nauvoo in June 1844. He served as a mission president in Canada in 1841 and as a missionary to Michigan in 1843, where he organized the St. Clair Branch. In 1849 he crossed the plains with the Samuel Gully/Orson Spencer Company and became a founding father of American Fork, Utah. Upon his death on April 15, 1889, a eulogist wrote that Brother Adams 'went the way of all the world… in full faith.'

Fuller account of this event (the complete account as preserved in Historian’s Office, Martyrdom Account, The Joseph Smith Papers):

this letter was given to W m & John Barnes two Mobocrats who were afraid to go to Nauvoo fearing that the Mormons would kill them & lay every thing waste about Carthage, they therefore carried it to Arza Adams who was sick with the ague and fever about 2½ miles North of Carthage they awoke about 10 oclock at night , he was afraid to go on the Main road, <&> after two hours persuasion M r Benjamin Leyland consented to pilot Adams by “a blind road” & about midnight they started & arrived in Nauvoo